Move your Minecraft world to a new host in 10 minutes

Moving hosts sounds scary because it’s your world — months of builds, your plugin config, your players’ inventories. But a Minecraft server is just files. If you copy the right folders and don’t delete the old server until the new one is proven, there is no way to lose anything. The whole thing takes about ten minutes of actual work, most of which is waiting on an upload.

Here’s the order that keeps you safe.

Back up first, always

Before you touch anything, pull a full copy of your server down to your own machine. Even if the migration tools do the copying for you, a local backup means there is no single point of failure. On almost every host this is Files → Download or an SFTP grab.

The folders that actually matter:

• world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/ — your map, all dimensions. This is the one you cannot regenerate.
• plugins/ — the jars and the plugins/<name>/config.yml files. The config is often more painful to recreate than the plugin itself.
• mods/ — for Forge/Fabric/NeoForge servers. Match the loader version on the new host.
• server.properties, ops.json, whitelist.json, banned-players.json — your settings and permissions.

Skip logs/, cache/ and libraries/ — they’re regenerated automatically and just slow the transfer.

Getting the files onto ChunkyHost

Be aware of what this step looks like on our side today, because it decides your timing. ChunkyHost has no self-serve upload yet. The panel’s file browser is read-only — it lists your world files and hands you download links, which is the direction you want on the way out, but it will not take an upload on the way in. There is no SFTP endpoint and no auto-import from another host either.

So there is currently no way to bring an existing world onto ChunkyHost — not by hand, not by import. A server bought today starts with a fresh world. We would rather you read that here than discover it after paying, and it is the reason to keep the backup you just made somewhere safe: it is what you will restore from when import ships.

Everything else in this guide — what to back up, what to leave behind, and how to verify the result — applies exactly the same whichever host you land on.

Test on a whitelist before you flip anything

This is the step people skip and regret. Once the files are on the new host, start the server but leave it on a different IP and turn the whitelist on (whitelist on in the console, then whitelist add <yourname>). Now log in yourself and check the things that actually break in a move:

• Does the world load at spawn, and do your builds look right?
• Are all your plugins/mods loading clean? Watch the console for red on startup.
• Are op/whitelist permissions intact?
• Right Minecraft version and loader (1.21.x Paper, Fabric, NeoForge — whatever you ran)?

If anything’s off, your old server is still untouched and still running. Fix it on the new box at your leisure. Nobody on your community has noticed a thing.

Re-point your DNS or IP, then flip

When the new server passes, it’s time to send players to it. If you connect with a raw ip:port, just give people the new address. If you use a domain (an A record or a SRV record pointing at your host), update that record to the new IP. DNS can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours to propagate, so do this when the server’s already healthy — not while you’re still debugging.

Then turn the whitelist back off, let your players in, and watch the new server for a day before you cancel the old one. There is no rush to delete anything.

Test it before you cut over

The honest reason migrations stall is fear of paying for a host before you know it works. So test first: start on the smallest plan that fits, import your world, run it on a whitelist, and decide for real before you point anyone at the new address. Your old server never has to go down while you do — and cancellation is prorated if it turns out not to suit you.

When you’re ready to size the new box, run your modpack and player count through the free RAM calculator so you don’t overpay, and check current pricing for what hibernation actually saves you on a server that isn’t busy 24/7.